Pre-employment testing has become a standard and crucial part of the talent recruitment process across most industries.
Structured assessment tools enable hiring teams to thoroughly screen applicants and evaluate both hard skills and soft skills that correlate with success in jobs.
Unlike unstandardized interviews or basic resume screenings alone, pre-employment assessments help provide deeper insights into abilities using validated testing methods.
They assist organizations in making more data-driven people decisions based on evidence of competence.
This article defines common categories of pre-employment tests, screens and assessments used to objectively measure crucial job-related capabilities that enable superior performance.
We will analyze the major types of standardized talent assessments including cognitive, knowledge, motor skills, behavioral and personality tests.
What are Pre-Employment Assessments?
Formal Evaluation of Job Skills and Qualities
Pre-employment assessments refer to formal evaluation instruments and tools used to measure skills, knowledge, abilities and personal attributes that underlie real-world job competence and performance. They serve as standardized methods for objectively quantifying talent.
Carefully constructed assessments present applicants with structured tasks and questions mapped explicitly to bonafide job-related competencies required across in the workplace.
Tests may gauge cognitive skills like math fluency or verbal reasoning, hands-on skills like tool usage or typing proficiency, interpersonal skills like courtesy or conflict resolution, self-management abilities like multitasking under pressure, and much more.
High-quality assessments directly gauge if applicants possess attributes enabling productivity, safety, reliability and satisfaction in jobs. Scores offer a valid metric for comparing candidates.
Data-Driven Hiring Decisions
While resume reviews help determine background qualifications and interviews may reveal interpersonal presentation, assessments provide the most valid data predicting future occupational achievement.
Standardized testing allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of whether applicants have current abilities to meet demands.
Rather than depending solely on subjective human judgment prone to various well-known biases, talent analytics add consistency and accuracy in screening.
Applying the science of psychometrics generates data-drive insights about predicted capacity to flourish in the role. Combining assessment results with other inputs creates the best-informed candidate choices.
Fairness and Compliance in Hiring
Properly designed and implemented pre-employment tests comply with laws around fair and non-discriminatory selection procedures.
Assessing defined, job-related skill capacities largely avoids controversies regarding inappropriate considerations of race, age, gender and other protected characteristics. Assessments focus strictly on existing capabilities.
Many physical abilities, commercial skills and safety knowledge requirements remain justifiable in ensuring specific demands are met.
Structured procedures aim to promote equal employment opportunities. Additionally, reasonable accommodations may assist disabled applicants facing certain psychomotor obstacles.
Cognitive Ability Assessments
Cognitive abilities refer to brain-based skills that influence learning, adaptability, understanding complexity, managing overload and solving all types of workplace problems.
Given most jobs require dynamic decision-making, assessing these talents predicts capacities to perform mental job requirements. Categories of cognitive pre-employment tests include:
General Mental Ability Tests
Also called general intelligence tests, these assessments gauge overall thinking capacities through verbal, numerical, logical and spatial reasoning questions.
They provide global intelligence scores reflecting speed in processing information, drawing inferences, and demonstrating versatile problem-solving across contexts.
While controversial, measures of general mental abilities reliably predict acquisition of job knowledge and future learning curves in both entry level and advanced professional positions. Critics argue these tests disadvantage certain groups and better alternatives exist.
Verbal Reasoning Tests
Verbal reasoning assessments present written passages, scenarios and argument sets requiring comprehension, interpretation, analysis and inferences about presented ideas.
Questions tap into capacities for information recall, vocabulary, capturing implications, evaluating arguments, and explaining conclusions.
These tests assess abilities in understanding nuanced communications essential for legal, academic, scientific, technological and management-related fields.
Examples include reading comprehension tests and Watson-Glaser style critical thinking appraisals.
Numerical Reasoning Tests
Mathematical reasoning exams measure skill in working with numerical data sets like tables, graphs, charts, ratios, percentages and inferential statistics. Items require analyzing quantitative information, identifying patterns and trends, testing hypotheses, projecting forecasts based on provided information under fixed time frames.
Financial, accounting, analytics, engineering, research and inspection roles rely heavily on such numerical interpretation, logic and decision-making talents.
Logical Reasoning Tests
These assessments present abstract visual puzzles, pattern extrapolation problems, figural matrices and conceptual brainteasers to evaluate capacities for discerning relationships between concepts, deducing implications from principles, and applying logic independently of specific content domains.
Succeeding indicates broad problem-solving skills across fields as diverse as computer science, law, investigations, strategic planning, financial modeling and laboratory sciences.
Job Knowledge and Skill Assessments
While cognitive abilities enable easier learning, actually demonstrating occupation-specific knowledge and hands-on skills predicts superior role performance once onboarded.
Common job skill assessment types include:
Technical Skill Demonstrations
These assessments measure competency in performing essential duties through simulated exercises, work samples and skill demonstrations mirroring precise on-the-job activities.
Applicants complete realistic tasks like operating equipment, building circuit boards, troubleshooting issues, coding functions, designing blueprints and more.
Hands-on simulations directly gauge existing technical competencies required in manufacturing, engineering, IT, trades, healthcare, creative and countless vocational roles.
Testing occupational prowess provides legal, accurate insight into predicted performance.
Job Knowledge Inventories
Job knowledge tests assess familiarity with facts, principles, guidelines and concepts directly related to classroom and workplace training requirements in a given career.
Content reflects precise knowledge individuals should master before qualification.
Questions cover everything from food safety policies for restaurant roles to accounting regulations for finance hires and product specifications for retail employees.
Higher scores predict easier transitions through onboarding programs.
Literacy and Numeracy Tests
For basic manual labor, customer service, administrative and clerical roles, fundamental tests in language comprehension, communication, arithmetic, computer operations, data entry and recordkeeping help assess trainability.
Applicants perform simple readings, calculations, data manipulations and searches that demonstrate baseline abilities to complete onboarding programs for elementary roles and operate essential occupational tools.
Typing/Data Entry Tests
Administrative assistants, call center representatives, researchers, secretaries and most desk jobs require keyboarding and computer terminal skills for productivity.
Tactile data entry and typing assessments score speed and accuracy entering information, formatting documents and compiling reports under time constraints.
Cutoffs for words or keystrokes per minute determine baseline levels necessary for keeping pace with information flow in document-intensive positions. Those below thresholds struggle handling volumes.
Personality and Behavioral Assessments
While cognitive and skill capacity remain paramount, behavioral trends and personality traits also factor into potential workplace achievement.
Common assessments gauging interpersonal qualities include:
Personality Inventories
Personality assessments survey intrinsic, enduring behavioral tendencies through self-descriptive questionnaire items.
They categorize temperament across dimensions like extraversion, conscientiousness, stability or empathy. While controversial, profiles may indicate suitability matching job cultures.
Critically, pure “pass/fail” use risks discriminatory exclusion. Responsible parties debate such assessments lacking strong validity evidence directly linking specific traits with performance.
Most advise narrowly targeted usage for specific emotional demands.
Emotional Intelligence Tests
These emerging exams gauge intelligently applying emotions via situational judgment items. Applicants interpret social cues, identify appropriate responses and demonstrate perceiving or controlling emotions when problem-solving.
Scores reflect perceiving, understanding and managing feelings toward productive ends.
Higher emotional intelligence allows smoother customer and colleague interactions. However, standardized testing remains imperfect compared to observing active skill demonstration.
Integrity and Ethics Tests
These assessments aim to gauge trustworthiness and reduce counterproductive work behaviors using true/false self-reports targeting historical behaviors and attitudes signaling future risks.
Most focus on theft, deception and policy breaking admission, but some indicate wider conscientiousness.
However, any self-report presumes accurate self-awareness and honesty. Faking to gain employment remains problematic. Augmenting with verifiable records checks increases utility.
Customer Service Aptitude Tests
Aptitude assessments present customer scenarios through textual, audio or video vignettes requiring judgment in assessing needs, identifying solutions and crafting responsive verbal interactions according to established service standards.
Performance predicts suitability for client-facing roles in sales, service, hospitality and related fields where social skills drive outcomes. Those lacking innate perceptiveness struggle despite training.
Physical and Motor Ability Assessments
For physically demanding roles, assessing power, endurance and movement abilities remains imperative for avoiding injury risks and productivity deficits. Common physical tests include:
Strength and Stamina Tests
Labor-intensive manual occupations in trades, construction, custodial, warehousing, farming, manufacturing and uniformed civil service fields require baseline muscular strength and cardiovascular endurance.
Quantified evaluations through fitness testing batteries tracking heart rate recovery, grip strength via dynamometer, vertical leap height, push-ups completed and similar metrics provides legally defensible criteria ensuring applicants can perform continual lifting, carrying, walking andRemaining productive through full shifts without straining themselves.
Stamina tests like stepping ergometers measuring peak oxygen consumption assess aerobic health for avoiding exhaustion.
Static strength tests indicate capacity for lifting volumes without undue fatigue. Together, predictors reduce likelihood of physical undersupply once onboard.
Coordination and Dexterity Tests
Roles demanding fine psychomotor control over smaller muscle groups, such as surgeons, dental hygienists, lab techs, manufacturing assemblers, craft workers, musicians or athletes benefit from manual dexterity assessments measuring precision of movement.
These include bilateral coordination tasks like transferring pins between hands, arm speed evaluations like targeted grip-and-moves, response speed tests, and assessments tracking error rates tracing paths.
Highly coordinated candidates adeptly handle detailed equipment and protect product quality.
Testing physical motor abilities provides legally defensible grounds for ensuring those unable handle demands endangering themselves and customers avoid unsafe onboarding.
Data protects applicants from harm while maximizing consumer safety.
Conclusion: Key Benefits of Assessment Testing
Pre-employment assessments serve as invaluable talent analytics tools for hiring teams seeking to make judicious people decisions.
Properly validated tests help objectively measure both hard skills and soft skills that underpin workplace achievement.
Major categories covered include cognitive assessments of mental abilities, job skills demonstrations quantifying technical competencies, physical/motor exams documenting physical capacities, and behavioral tests revealing interpersonal qualities.
When carefully selected and integrated appropriately within talent screening workflows, structured assessments yield measurable advantages.
Benefits span easier identification of qualified applicants, legally defensible and bias-mitigating hiring methods, enhanced predictive validity, reduced ramp-up times, increased worker productivity, and significant improvements across key talent metrics.
In summary, incorporating targeted, vetted pre-employment assessments alongside other inputs generates superior insights into candidates and talent choices.
Prioritizing valid, skills-based testing helps build more solid workforces.
